You Can Do Anything That Involves Reverse Engineering, Modding, Adding Digital to Analog, Sniffing Busses, Modifying Firmware, and More!

Submit a Blog in Hardware Hackingor tag your post HardwareHackingCH for a Chance to Win!

The theme for May 2020 is Hardware Hacking and it comes from neuromodulator . His idea was to do projects that involve anything from reverse engineering, modding, adding digital to analog, sniffing busses, modifying firmware, and more. Your "hack" can involve an original creation or method or way of solving a problem especially if its done in an unorthodox fashion. A good first step to hardware hacking, even if you don't know what you want to do at this point, is to rip something open, typically referred to as a teardown, and to figure out how it works. During your product teardown you could explore any number of product assembly/disassembly methods and anti-tamper mechanisms. Once your box is open you'll get a chance to identify components such as discrete components, integrated circuits, PCB, Buses and Interfaces, and memory and firmware. Hardware Hacking is a great way to learn or work on reverse engineering a PCB, something that is necessary to fix a problem that may not be obvious such as blown fuse or a defective capacitor, as well as, more advanced tasks such as adding functionality to a device. Along the way you'll get a chance to work on your soldering/desoldering technique, use a multimeter or a schematic or a block diagram to determine pin function, use a logic analyzer for signal monitoring or digital decoding, locate the programming/debug interface on a custom PCB, extract firmware using vendor specific tools, debug and disassemble to determine security mechanisms, bypass security by modifying and injecting new firmware, JTAG exploitation, and so much more!

You can use this as an opportunity to modify any household appliance or consumer electronic product, such as an old game console, to perform functions that they were not intended to do. The hardware hacking challenge is an opportunity to do anything that involves product teardown, component identification, circuit board reverse engineering, soldering and desoldering, signal monitoring and analysis, and memory extraction, using a variety of tools including a logic analyzer, multimeter, and device programmer. Or, you can upcycle an existing product and turn it into something novel and perform something it was never intended to do such as the The Pi Rotary by balearicdynamics. Or, you could reverse engineer an existing product to create something beautiful such as the PiCasso Design Challenge - PiMassive - Blog #10 - PiMassive is Alive! by gam3t3ch. There are many ways to go about hardware hacking and the element14 community is full of inspiring ideas from any number of projects by members in our monthly Project14 project competitions, our supplier sponsored Design Challenges, as well as element14 presents properties such as The Electronics Inside, Project Videos , and our archive of Ben Heck Show Episodes.

Every month you'll have a new poll where you'll get to decide an upcoming project competition, based on your interests, that will take place a couple of months in advance. Themes are broad in scope so that everyone can participate regardless of skill set.

What are Monthly Themes?

Every month (around the 14th of each month) a new theme will be posted on Project14.

Submit your ideas (proposals) for your projects to get feedback from the rest of the community.

Submit a project entry in the Theme space once you start working on it.